SHOULD WE TALK TO CRIMINALS?

Yes, If It Means Exposing Hull's Drug Problems. Though John Prescott Seems
to Disagree.

When is it right to use known criminals as sources for stories? Letters
have been flying between this office, Westminster and the city of Hull
recently, following our crime correspondent's contention that the Yorkshire
port had become 'the drugs capital of Britain'.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who has been a Hull MP since 1970,
wrote asking for our response to angry letters to the paper from a police
divisional commander, the chief executive of Kingston upon Hull city
council and the local drug action teams coordinator.

Not surprisingly, they were quick to defend a city which we said had become
a magnet for international gangs, including the Italian Mafia and Dutch
drug syndicates, which believed Hull's police and Customs units were less
sophisticated than those elsewhere in the country. The influx of drugs, we
said, had had a dramatic effect on street crime: levels of mugging and
robbery were rising, and the city topped Britain's car crime league.
Customs seizures in the past year had broken all records: one million
ecstasy tablets had been intercepted, compared with 30,000 the previous
year; cannabis seizures had grown by 1,100 per cent. A single lorry from
Rotterdam was found to be carrying drugs with a street value of ?22 million.

The police chief was angry that we had not spoken to him directly (although
we had spoken to his force, and quoted an anonymous detective who
complained of staff shortages) and that we had apparently ignored the local
drugs action team and chosen instead to speak to a number of criminals who
'tried to promote themselves to major league status by making outrageous
statements about our city while lounging in front of a Ferrari wearing dark
sunglasses' (a reference to the picture that accompanied our piece).

The council's chief executive condemned as 'a fanciful notion' our
description of Hull as a magnet for drug gangs, and felt we had insulted
local police and Customs by suggesting that they were unsophisticated.
(Yet, surely a dramatic increase in drugs seizures could be seen as
testament to efficient law enforcement?)

'We accept that the city has major problems to tackle, drugs among them,
but this is little different to all other deprived urban areas in the
country. To have singled out the city in the way that you have done_
debases the role a responsible press should fulfil.'

Well, what is the role of a responsible press if it isn't to reveal
unpalatable facts that politicians and officials would rather we didn't know?

Our story of Hull's predicament came to light in a series of conversations
with all manner of people across the city - officials included, some of
whom are now complaining.

In his letter, the drugs action team coordinator admits that Hull, like
other cities, 'has fairly high levels of class A drug use, mainly involving
the intravenous use of heroin. This is being addressed through a dynamic
drug strategy that attracts more people into treatment, educates young
people about the dangers of class A drugs and targets supply.'

He maintains that drug-related crime has reduced, following covert
operations and information from the public, yet an email sent to this
office by members of a local residents' group, after we published our
story, paints a very different picture. They asked not to be identified for
fear of reprisals from drug dealers.

'We love this city. Sadly, it has gone to the low-lifes who trade in other
people's misery. Our community has been working with the police for several
months. They have been given more than 45 registration numbers of cars
whose owners are directly involved with the supply of drugs. Residents have
risked the lives of their families gathering information for the police,
all to no avail. Nothing is happening. Mums, dads, everyday folks have had
their lives ruined. The drug dealers rule Hull, literally.'

The police commander maintains in his letter that crime in the city fell by
9 per cent last year and house burglary by 22 per cent, and goes on:
'Perhaps the most critical challenge the police and our partners need to
focus on is public perception - the gulf between the facts and what the
public believe them to be.'

Our worried local residents believe what they see out of their windows.
'The dealers work openly on our street. What can we the people do to
convince our police force to do something?' they plead in a later email to
the paper. 'Hull's violent crime has increased dramatically. A dealer in
our area has just had a baseball bat used on him.'

Which leads us back to the question of using criminals as sources of
information. Our story named and quoted several underworld figures who were
frank about the opportunities they saw in Hull. We must stress that The
Observer did not pay for this information. Indeed, in keeping with the
Society of Editors' Code of Practice, we never pay for information from
criminals. We spoke to them because, in the words of our crime
correspondent: 'As the police know through their informant network, they
are the people who best know what is really going on.'